Reconstructing Rituals

Abstract

The final chapter pulls together central threads that characterize this pilgrimage network. Pilgrimage gives a particular ritual form to individuals’ quest to seek recovery, healing, meaning, and connection in their lives. The Norwegian pilgrimage network offers various experiences, narratives, and strategies for pilgrims, hosts, locals, and tourists to engage in rediscovering and reinventing history, making meaning, seeking cultural experiences, reclaiming indigenous history and spirituality, and reconstructing spiritual traditions. The figure of St. Olav provides a prism through which contemporary Norwegians can reflect on the ambivalence of the past, as well as critique present practices and narratives of what it means to be Christian, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be Norwegian, and what saintly lives in the context of climate change might look like. Nidaros Cathedral facilitates such engagement as an adaptable space anchoring widely diverse engagements with both heritage and contemporary society. Thus, these and other ritual practices serve to reconstruct heritage critically in a pilgrimage network that is remarkably open for the transformative reconstruction of spiritual practices and narratives in a shifting sacred geography.